Guilds

Guild Strength and production

Guilds have an over all strength which can be used in the course of the month to:

Increase SEI

Increase Guild strength

Increase money production

Make things (depending on the guild)

Guild strength points that are spent on Guild Actions (raising SEI, making potions, etc.) in the course of the month will be recovered at the upcoming production; so they are not lost permanently, but are “spent” only in terms of other things you try to do that production phase.

Strength points put in one area are not available for use elsewhere. To increase guild strength you need to put points in Strength. The chance of going up by 1 is dependent on the ratio of current strength to available points.

If 100% of the available points goes to Strength then the guild strength goes up. If the available points are, say, only 10% of the over all guild strength then the chance of going up is 10%.

Your guilds can be set to different production toggles, either Crowns production or Strength points. Each production, each guild gets a number of Strength points equal to the Strength toggle percentage set to that guild. The Strength points can be spent towards various ends, such as increasing or decreasing the SEI of the loction it is in. Any points not spent are divided by the level of the guild and that is the chance that the guild will go up a level.

Example: Guild #1215 (an alchemist’s guild) has a strength rating of 30. It is set at toggle 3, meaning that it dedicates 15 points towards producing cash and 15 towards its strength rating. During the course of the month the guild produces 4 invisibility potions (G4 order), using 4 pieces of nightshade and 4 strength units. It also uses 5 points to raise the SEI of the location it is in (G1 order). At the end of the month, it has 6 strength points left towards raising the guild level. These 6 points are divided by 30 (the level of the Guild), yielding a 20% chance of going up one level. So it is not so that the division between Crowns and Strength Increase is made at production, on the basis of what effective strength does remain after Guild Orders (so in the present case, it is not so that the toggle means that 50% of the remaining 21 points goes to Strength).

Requirements to own guilds

The requirements for building and challenging guilds are fairly straightforward in Rules book (p. 36). Two points leading to confusing are not mentionned:

To Challenge for a Guild, it is your ‘pure’ BASE prestige that counts, not your Effective prestige. This ‘pure’ Base prestige is right on your printout (Base prestige), and does not contain prestige from Marks and Titles.

The requirements for building/owning guilds are also your ‘pure’ statistics of skill or attribute, those without the adds of items, blesses, statusses, spells, etc.

Example: Building a Ranger guild needs 10 PC; if you had 8 PC and +2 from a status, then you cannot build it. (One player swears that for PC, it is Base + Status adds, but that is not the official viewpoint. If you are ever able to check, do let me know.)

Example: a level 6 priest with +4 priest levels from Holy Symbols cannot build a church; he has to have a base level of ten.

These ‘pure’ ratings are not on your printout – but you can use the View Basic Self order V5 to get to know them.

Note that when a priest wants to build a Church, all needed mana for it must come from his base skill; he cannot use free mana from items or mana that arise from item adds to his skill.

The requirements for building Knight and Ranger guilds are not a certain skill level (like is the case with other professional guilds) but Personal Combat.

All guilds built automatically come with all skill knowledge; for Knight Guilds this means they can teach Berseker, Knight, Swordmaster, Axemaster and Bowmaster skill.

Building Guilds with two players

Often two cooperating players would like to build a guild, but one of them has the skills and one of them has the force (like a Hero postion and an Overlord postion working together).

The classic problem is that the order (L9) has the sponsor as a force. The force has to be owned by the position that is moving and the character (parameter A) that is to run the guild must be from the same position. Additonally the pop segment to do the labor must also be in the pop segment of the sponsoring force…

What has been done in the past for the friendly hero to build a guild has been the following two techniques:

1. Most common: the position owner gifts the town to the Hero and tells him what the pop seg number is that has the laborers to do the building. The hero in the following turn then issues the build order and gifts the town back to the original owner.

Potential problems:

The location owner must have at least 11 forces to be able to gift one.

If the hero is a pagan dog he can steal the pop and possessions and run…

2. Second most common technique: the location owner makes a Building Force outside of his location with the 100 laborers in it. This is kept in the same province as the location and the location owner transfers into this force food and supplies to build guilds. Sometimes this outside force is give some soldiers and always placed under Patrol and Defend orders so as to pick up any kamikaze scouts before they get to the city. It also sometimes used as an outside warehouse legion to dump junk items into…spare food etc. This Chain Gang force is then gifted to the Wizard who can build a guild INTO the main location since the check on the target of the building is only that it is in the same province as the building force.

Potential problems:

The location owner has to split the population of his main pop seg.

It uses up an extra force.

If the hero is a smelly bitch he can steal the laborers.

In the turn of transfer the SEI of the main pop seg goes down based on the % transfered to a max of -25.

Advantages:

It has the potential of acting as a City Patrol screen against outside forces

Limited exposure

Provides a mobile Chain Gang which can be sent around to assist in building guilds

Outside laborers still clear land(!)

Guild Revenue

The production of crowns by a guild is determined by the following formula:

Fx has a population of 14,000. Gy is a strength-20 guild, but it is also the smaller of two thieves guilds in that force, so due to competition its effective strength is 10. It devotes 50% of its strength to revenue and the tax rate is 2%. Its revenue is 5 * 140 = 700 crowns, or 686 after taxes.

Guild Defenses against Covert Activities

Guilds are some of the easiest targets for thieves:

A guild does not get any help against covert orders from the soldiers of the location it is in. Only the soldiers actually assigned to the guild defend against Spy and Steal orders.

A guild does not have any benefits against covert orders, like the -70 or -180 that lairs and ruins receive.

Residences are not thief-proof, so Heroes: do not use them to store your hard earned items!

People in guilds cannot be captured by soldiers: guild soldiers cannot used Military order 31, and even soldiers in the location cannot use it to capture someone inside a guild.

Markets

A market in your main location can be useful for severalreasons (e.g. bonusses to crown production of tradesmen).

Markets cannot be entered and “viewed” as forces or guilds can be.

Marketplace owners can generally be identified (for influence purposes or otherwise) as characters in the 1300-1350 range whose last two digits are the same as the last two digits of the Market. At least this how it used to be.

Guild Entry

When turning your characters into monster races like Young Dragons and the like, remember that monster races are automatically prohibited from entering the guild by the guild’s soldiers unless they personally own the guild.

Presumably one could still use stealth to enter the guild (although the idea of a “stealthy” dragon sneaking into a guild is rather amusing).

Dropping and Destroying Guilds

If you have reached your limit of guilds (15), then you’ll have to do order G10 to drop a reserve guild id# from your Reserve List, so its place can be taken by a fat former-NPC guild.

The FASTEST way to destroy a guild would be to issue military order 13, Attack Guild. Your local garrison attacks the target guild, and fights it out with the guards, if any. The results will be to greatly reduce its strength or destroy it (if you’re successfull), and to nab its possessions. If you do not own the guild, you will not gain possession of it by this order! Of course, you may also want to set the Guild Soldier Toggle to zero for that particular guild. The drawback to this military order is that you won’t be able to issue other military orders, like patrol and defend. Destroying a guild with the Attack Guild order takes more than just killing all the soldiers. In NIC, I used a Major Location’s soldiers to nuke a strength 21 church in the town, and even though I killed all the soldiers instantly, the church only dropped to strength 10. So “fastest” is a relative thing…

There are other slower ways: crank the guild tax rate for that particular guild to 100% and covert away its crown supply, slander it with a rumormonger, decrease its strength with spells, etc.

If you destroy a guild by taxes and rumormongering, the guild possessions should drop into the force. If you destroy a guild by attack then there is a 20+ % chance per item that they will disappear into thin air.

Practising in Guild and Spells in Guilds

The effects of Practicing in Guilds are clearly spelled out under order S1/S2 and on p. 39. Only some rumours may be added.

It is said that Arcane users can practice their skills not only in a Magic guild but also in an Alchemist guild, be it that in the latter case, they only get something like half the guild strength bonus. This is not in the Book, but it would be similar to the effect on Spell Research (see p. 39, Alchemist guild bonus is 1/2 that of Arcane Guild), so it might well be true.

S2 and p. 39 indicate that you can practice PC and TAC in Knight and Ranger Guilds to get the strength of the guild being added to your chances. It is rumoured that this only works if you have the skill of the guild you’re in: Knight in a knight guild, ranger in a ranger guild. Whether this is true remains unclear.

You can put up arcane spells in a Mage Guild with order G3. The Rules Book says “the direct owner” (p. 213), suggesting that only the guild owner (i.e. one PC) can do the teaching. But game experience has told players that the whole position of the guild owner can do G3! So your sidekick can teach a spell to a guild owned by your Main.

Setup Guilds

If you do a setup in Crown of Chaos (CC) or another module that allow them, do not forget to indicate on your setup form what Setup Guilds you want, what type, who their sponsor is, and what’s the guild name. Plus in which location they must be build! The rules for Setup Guilds are:

* ANY character of your Setup (i.e. all characters with id#1-1000) can sponsor a Setup Guild, not just your Main.

* The sponsor must meet the normal building requirements (skill/PC level) for that guild type!! Any skill of the sponsor can be used, not just the highest one. Even a Residence may be chosen.

* For CC: the starting guild owned by a secondary character has to be placed in a city of its own race (not in that of the race of the main character); so the words “your race” of the CC book p.4 refers to the Sponsor (not to you, the player, in the sense of the Main).

* An Overlord can own as possible set-up guilds:

Church, Ranger, Knight, Inn, Tournament, Residence

Most common is for them to build a Church and then a Knight’s guild and/or an Inn. Look at order G1 why a Church…. (And note that Merchant Guilds now are, like Churches and Thieves Guilds, more effective in raising SEI, which was not the case before, I think.)

Only the D class and E class characters can build the Magic and Alchemist guilds – which is a (tiny) benefit of the Mercenary option vs. the Overlord option.

Guild Facilities

A new feature in LII games are the Facilities, that can be build in a guild to generate specific effects. For the building materials and facility effects, see the book, p.38.

General

* Remember that only guilds that are directly owned by a MAIN character can have facilities built in them. The guild must already exist before you can add a Facility.

* The owner of the guild need not be present to build a facility. Look at order G9 and note that it is the GUILD that does the building, and not the Main character (p.38 falsely suggests the latter).

* Facilities give their benefits only to persons or items inside of the guild, not to those in the city or on the road. So a Stable only benefits herds in the guild, a Dungeon applies only to prisonners in the guild, a Vault applies only to crowns in the guild, a Palace provides INF/Prestige bonuses only to a Main being inside of the guild, etc.

* A guild may have more than one facility of a DIFFERENT type. So a Residence can have a Dungeon, a Palace and a Vault, but not two Dungeons.

* The building materials for making a facility, need to be in the guild. The building is done with G9 (Sponsor = guild, Target = e.g. 2 for a Shrine, etc.) Only guilds owned by a Main can do order G9.

* Guild Facilities cannot seperately be taken by challenge, as they go with the guild.

Benefits

* The +25 study benefits on p. 38 are a flat +25% increase, and not a % increase to the Base chance.

* The value of the Guild will add to the facility effect (i.e: Guild Str + facility effect)!

* Smithy: the +50% Runemaster value to make items means that when you have a runemaster trying to make an item duplicate, he has a flat +50% to the CHANCE (chance is still normally capped).

* Library: will not add +25% to spell research (S11) or studying Attributes (S2), it only adds towards skill rank improvement (S1).

Mana-Needing Facilities

For the facilities (Stable, Smithy) that require mana, the following is valid:

* The mana has to come from the guild owner, but apparently also in this case he does not need to be present.

* Any mana will do, also holy mana. So also a priest can build a Stable if he fulfils the other requirements.

* Free mana can not be employed in this task, only the mana supplied by the arcane/priest level. So a magic user does not gain for “in arcane” or other such bonuses. You must have 25 or 35 mana available on your PC’s arcane overview.

Residence Facilities

* You can take a Residence as Setup Guild, but it does NOT give any prestige. Production (Toggle setting) will not increase the guild strength of a residence above 2. However you can increase its strength by spell #19. A good reason for doing that would be order P7 that after all has “guild str. times 5”. As we saw above, the guild strength adds to the facility effect, so also for Palaces etc. boosting Residence guild strength is useful.

* Dungeon: if a prisonner in a dungeon tries to escape, then only the guards of the guild count, not those of the location.

* As soldiers in a guild guard with square root of (sum of guard ratings of soldiers times 3), see C10 and C12, a Dungeon or Vault facility bonus of a flat +50% counts as: 833 extra militia soldiers (with Guard rating 1), or 33 extra Guards (Guard rating 25).. Which is not too much. However, this only is valid if you have zero real soldiers in the guild. As Jimmy van der Meij pointed out to me: if you have 100 real guards in there, which give a protection of 86.6%, and you add to that the 50% bonus, you get 136.6%. And if you calculate the latter figure back to soldiers, you get a total of 248.8 guards, so a facility in that case gives an increase of 148-149 guards, and not a mere 33! So the benefit of such a facility rises with the amount of real soldiers present. For example, if the town owner does not allow more than 100 soldiers in the guild, adding a facility can more than double your guards! Further you can boost the strenght of the Residence in an excessive way to add to that. The fact remains though that the average town holder will likely just want to store his goodies/prisonners in his location. For the facility bonusses will likely not be enough to compensate the reduced number of guards that a guild can host compared to a location. However, the Dungeon has the benefit of Interrogation (P7)! A good reason to build one and boost your Residence – but not to hold prisonners in, just to interrogate them temporarily. But why you would want to build a Vault seems less obvious. Not even when you would manage to somehow magically boosts your Residence to str. 50. Anyone sees a reason?? If you are a Hero without any soldiers, you would rather eat your hard-won gold than leaving them for all coverts to spot in a residence in some provincial town, guarded by 33 virtual guards… And normally crowns are not the problem for a lair basher anyhow, it are all the piles of junk he would like to store somewhere SAFELY. Hmmm?

Challenging for Guild Control

Note that you can challenge your own secondary or tertiary characters for control of their guilds, so to get the guild’s prestige to your Main. No loss of loyalty or other nastiness happens.

This article is reproduced with kind permission from “Aayko’s The Legends Corner”.

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Disclaimer

These articles have been written over a period of 20 years, and as such, some of the information may be out of date. Harlequin Games takes no responsibility for the results of any action taken in game based on any of article.